“The most creative people I know are the ones who figured it out for themselves.”

On the eve of the publication of his 10th (!) Sandman Slim novel, Hollywood Dead, Richard Kadrey joins the show to talk about discovering himself as a series writer, converting the raw material of his religious upbringing into urban horror and fantasy, and his drive to understand the character of Lucifer and how evil has been portrayed in the western world. We also get into LA’s transparent power-dynamics, the moment when he started receiving fan art and fanfic of his work, his recognition that he’s a hard worker but a terrible employee, the ways his journalism training benefited his fiction writing, why the second Sandman Slim book was the hardest thing he ever wrote, his best practices for book tours, writing on drugs, keeping it together when he met JG Ballard, the importance of being unqualified for anything, and more! Give it a listen! And go buy Hollywood Dead & a whole passel of other Richard’s novels!

“I don’t want to be one thing for the rest of my life. I love writing Sandman Slim. I love writing pulp, and action, and horror, but I don’t want to be just that guy forever.”

“Lots of people ask me what to do about writer’s block. The first thing you do is change your technique.”

New York Times bestselling author Richard Kadrey has published more than a dozen novels, including the Sandman Slim series, the Coop series, and Metrophage, as well as more than fifty stories. He has been immortalized as an action figure, his short story “Goodbye Houston Street, Goodbye,” was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and Butcher Bird was nominated for the Prix Elbakin in France. A freelance writer and photographer, he lives in San Francisco.